Today I share...

1. Big genre + age update! 🧐

2. Update on "Click to meet" fix

3. Preview new bookshelf design (with filters/tabs)

4. Traffic for January

5. Ben's life updates and reading list

Big genre + age update! 🧐

As you probably remember, we are working on adding genre and age data to Shepherd. 

The two goals for this round of work are:

1. Create genre and age-group-specific pages so that a reader can browse science fiction books or books for 4th graders. 

2. Add filters to bookshelves so readers interested in World War 2 can easily filter to see only history books or historical fiction. Or, if they are on the bookshelf for dinosaurs, they can filter books to show only books for 1st graders.

There is a massive amount of work to clean up. 

• For genres: I am using BISAC data, and I need to go through 3,347 genres to test, learn, and tune them. I also have the ability to create custom genres. 

• For age groups: we had to pull in text fragments from our book API providre around interest age and reading age. And I went through to apply age ranges based on what those said. I still need to do a lot of research and testing to see what works best (something that will be ongoing through all of 2023). 

Here are the biggest genres in our system...

And the biggest age groups in our system...

Anything that hits 18 and over is triggering the adult grouping. I will need to play with that and decide if adult books should include YA and how to do that smartly (weirdly challenging).

And for the first time, I better understand what genres and age groups are on your book recommendation lists and bookshelves. 

Here is the World War 2 bookshelf broken down by genre. 

(You might notice that the World War II genre is only on 41% of these books. My guess is the World War II genre is much pickier about what goes in it than the looser connections I make. For example, they would not count historical fiction about WW2 (we do if our topic engine makes a connection).)

And here are the age groups on Ben Gartner's list about the best new action-packed middle grade books with heart.

(right now, YA is set to 12 to 18, which is also hitting the top end of middle school with the 12)

I can't wait to ship features that use this data!

Update on "Click to meet" fix

In the last newsletter, I talked about why the click-to-meet element on our bookshelf pages is not working. Today I want to show you how I am fixing this.

Here is the current version of the click-to-meet element.

You can also try it on the World War 2 bookshelf to play with it live. 

What is the problem?

Nobody clicks on the click-to-meet area, and very few people realized that the recommender is an author.

My hypothesis was that the layout needs to be clearer and follow a clear hierarchy. The click-to-meet area is disconnected from the author making the recommendation.

Here is the new version of the click-to-meet element.

How does this fix the problem?

It clearly shows readers who is making the recommendation, indicates they are an author, and gives the reader a clear link to learn more about the recommender.

It also puts the spotlight on their list rather than their book (I want to get readers to the book recommendation page as it converts best for the recommender’s own book).

How do I know this is fixed? (famous last words)

I use a service called UserBob to ask random people to record themself while using and testing the new design. This is a great way to ensure it works because you get real user feedback. 

I did ~50 video recordings with users as I tested solutions. The current design fixes all the problems I sketch out above.

We will ship this new format in late March I believe. 

Preview new bookshelf design (with filters/tabs)

This is an early mockup that uses fake filler data in some areas.

What am I improving on this page?

1. Help readers jump right to books they are interested in, whether that be genre, age group, or other factors.

2. Add tabbed navigation to help readers jump from books to book lists and related topics more clearly. Right now, book lists and related bookshelves are at the bottom of the page and require a lot of scrolling. 

3. Demonstrate why readers should trust our book picks and what Shepherd is all about.

I am actively working on this design, so it is messy right now.

What do you think of the new filters and book-finding wizard? 🙂🧐🤨

Feel free to reply and let me know what you like and don't like.

Shepherd traffic updates

For January, we had 441,000+ visitors and 577,000+ pageviews. That is 18% higher than last month and a new all-time traffic record. That is up 555% over the previous year.

Traffic from Google was up 17% month over month, which is fantastic! That will accelerate as we get more pages and features shipped. It usually takes ~3 years to rank for competitive Google searches (we are 21 months old).

My goal for 2023 is to reach one million monthly visitors. 

What else is going on?

Yesterday was my son's first day of real school. That was cool to see! I can still remember my dad walking me to school for 1st grade 😊. I also got some rest this month. We spent a week visiting Granada and Malaga, Spain. Beautiful cities and it was nice to enjoy the warmth.

What am I reading?

• I finished Machinehood by S.B. Divya. What a FANTASTIC book! The world and future she paints around bioengineering, AI, and robots are unreal.

• I just started Ben Voa's Mars. It is recommended on two lists at Shepherd. 

• An unpublished book - My brother introduced me to a friend who has an unpublished book I am interested in for a project. I am looking forward to reading it, as it sounds wild!

Thanks, Ben

P.S. Picture of Malaga in January, what a treat :)

Want to join our membership program?

The membership program launched in September, and we've had 251+ readers and authors sign up.

That is amazing and makes me so happy. 

This helps us financially, and I have many more perks for authors and readers. I will share more details in the coming months.

100% of your membership goes toward new features.

My goal is to hire a full-time developer in 2023. Currently, we work with a fantastic part-time developer named Marton. My goal is to hire a full-time developer in addition to Marton. This would allow us to speed up the development of new features.

Imagine what we can do with 1.5 developers, given what we have accomplished with 0.5 :).